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12:07 p.m. - 2012-03-26
A Reformation.

The other day Mick and I were sitting in the kitchen eating leftover something out of bowls. (I can't remember exactly what but it involved a lot of slurping. Spaghetti, I think.) We were talking with our mouths full and then I made a big burp and Mick topped it with a louder one. He brought up our 1st date anniversary and in the pause between mouthfuls we looked at each other. Hard. And it hit us all at once. We stopped burping and slurping and started to laugh. I was in my ratty sweats and my hair was all snatzy and sticking up. He was wearing an old stained t-shirt and hadn't had a shave in a couple days so his face was covered in silvery scruff. The both of us have gotten tubby and jowly and fricken old. The last five years have brought A LOT of changes, most of them wonderful, but after we finished laughing we solemnly agreed it was a good thing we'd met when we did because if we had to be out there dating the way we look now...ugh.

This revelation set us off again and we laughed so hard and so long Wolf sloped into the kitchen to see if we'd been drinking.

Of course it's not just the ravages of gravity, time and an excess of my good home cooking that got us laughing so hard, it was delight. It hadn't made a dent in how we see each other that we were so sloppy in our dress and lack of table manners, or hell, even that we'd gotten old and pot-bellied. Mick is still my gallant and I am his princess and we always will be this to each other no matter how saggy and wrinkly we get. To have it brought home with such startling clarity made us goofy in the head.

Wuv. Twue wuv.

You know, of course, my life isn't quite as small as it sounds here. However I am holding fast to my rule about staying away from political and moral minefields. I'm sick of the shouting and the ugliness. I know over the years some folk have been kind enough to tell me my take on something has made them rethink their position on it, but these days the reader pool of who still comes by here is small and most of you guys are longtime friends. Friends who know my views about politics and ethics and either mostly agree with how I see things or have politely agreed to disagree about the touchier stuff and hang out for the scintillating convos about hair and housework.

If the day ever comes when political and ethical and religious discussions regain some level of civility and we can talk like adults instead of using bludgeons of cruelty and childish mockery I might relax the 'No Contentious Topics' rule, but for the nonce hair and housework it is. Plus, see above about getting older. The need to prove I'm here by making a lot of noise and justifying my choices by hounding others into agreeing with me is well past. I'm cool with who and what I am. Which for anyone who's new to the party is that I am:

An atheist whose beliefs in things like karmic justice and the cosmic consciousness are rooted firmly in the idea there's a scientific explanation for these phenomena which we simply haven't found the correct way to test and prove yet. Those people who stand outside the norm and can do things like tune into others' thoughts or have a mental influence on the physical world like telekinesis or healing with their hands are just gifted in the same way a great athlete or mathematician is. Nobody thought it freaky or unnatural that Nolan Ryan could throw a 95mph fastball. Okay, Sophie Germain took a lot of crap for her brilliant math mind, but this was because of the societal misogyny and cultural norms of the time. In the late 1700s women were considered livestock much the same as cows and sheep were and who was ready to deal with a sheep that expanded and improved upon Fermat's Theorem?

Anyway, my point is there's plenty of people whose abilities are considered 'supernatural' who aren't anything of the sort. They are simply people who have a talent in areas not generally accepted as 'normal'. Yet. I'm sure the first people who could make fire were regarded as freaks who had dangerous spooky powers and were promptly killed for their weirdness, yet today nobody is going to bash someone's brains in because they can flick a Bic. We're all cool with the making fire thing. So someday we will be with people whose inborn talents allow them to do things which are right now regarded with fear, religious dread and disbelief.

I am a Liberal. I sincerely believe the measure of a civilization isn't tallied by how much wealth and power can be glommed onto by the few, but by how well we as a people care for the least of us. I find it astonishing that those who scream loudest about 'small government' want to park the government at the entrance to my vagina and decide for themselves what goes in or out of it. How about we see to taking care of the sick, the old, the small, and the uneducated first? How about we make sure no child is beaten and no one goes hungry? How about being good stewards of the environment? How about we leave some resources and some open space for our kids? And their kids? Is what I stick in my pussy really a bigger issue than a billion gallons of sludge in the Gulf of Mexico? Is it really? Color me confused.

I am a New Yorker, which to many means I'm rude and talk too fast and dress too well. Okay, I'll cop to the speedy speech. If it takes you 15 minutes to repeat back my order at Dairy Queen then we ARE going to have a problem. But see above about the ratty sweats. My Glamazon days are over. As far as being rude goes, I find the nosy and judgmental inquiries about my ink, piercings or lack thereof, any naysaying and social pressure about my choice of reading material, house paint, marital status, circumcision of my sons, hairstyle, the length and shagginess of my lawn, the menus at my dinner table, whether my kids are Scouts, what God I pray to (or in my case don't at all), my music, art, sexual practices including birth control, who I invite to dinner or attend their lectures, you following me here? Any intrusion into my choices that have zero spillover into your life, you're damn tootin' I consider that rude. My fabled New Yorker 'rude indifference' is actually the ultimate in respect and manners. I'll give you the space and autonomy to decide for yourself how you live and won't give you any static about it and you do the same for me, okay? I'll assume you know what you're doing with your own life and will hold off on any browbeating, witch hunting, snarky remarks or rock throwing and you give me the same courtesy and we'll be just fine.

I believe in The Golden Rule. Not because the Big Sky Daddy will pat my head for it and eventually let me into the VIP room in Heaven, but because to maintain a cooperative, civilized and successful society one must put out what one expects to get back. Otherwise the whole thing falls down. Because I have to live with myself. And doing dirty to others and taking advantage of their lacks and bad luck like having a poor education and limited experience is disgusting to me. Somebody has to go first. To turn down their high beams. To hold a door. To put aside the desire of the moment and grant others some grace space. Someday I'll be hurting and frantic and will need to cut ahead of others in line or get a hand up because I'm broke and scared, it's inevitable. Life happens. And when I have some room in my doings if I can cut someone else some slack, I will. Do I always get an equal measure back? Not even close, but keeping score just leads to grudges and an inflated sense of entitlement.

I'm not a great person. Or even a very good one. I flub stuff all the time. I fail to live up to my ideals every single day. Doesn't stop me from trying though. Trying to do right and being okay with the woman I see in the mirror. That tubby, rapidly aging, one man's princess and love of life, can heal with my hands, hear with my mind and not always my ears, believer in Good but not God, respectful of personal space, that bete noir of the fly-over states- a New York Liberal who accepts any and all of the frightened, ignorant, hostile prejudices that label carries and is still okay and able to deal and offer up room for gays to marry, people of color to walk the streets free from being shot by bigoted morons, for women and men to enjoy physical pleasure without prudish arbiters and guardians about who does what with whom, reader of the free press, mother of the autistic, survivor of sexual and physical abuse, good cook, middlin' gardener, and grateful (despite how skewed and perverted it's become) American.